A Darker Shade of Blue

by John Harvey

  ‘Are they there with her?’

  ‘No. At home, apparently.’

  ‘On their own?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe a neighbour? I’m afraid she’s not making a lot of sense.’

  Whitemore dropped the phone and finished pulling on his clothes.

  The house was silent: the blood slightly tacky to the touch. One more room to go. The bathroom door was bolted from the inside and Whitemore shouldered it free. Darren Pitcher was sitting on the toilet seat, head slumped forward, one arm trailing over the bath, the other dangling towards the floor. Long, vertical cuts ran down the insides of both arms, almost from elbow to wrist, slicing through the horizontal scars from where he had harmed himself before. Blood had pooled along the bottom of the bath and around his feet. A Stanley knife rested on the bath’s edge alongside an oval of pale green soap.

  Whitemore crouched down. There was a pulse, still beating faintly, at the side of Pitcher’s neck.

  ‘Darren? Can you hear me?’

  With an effort, Pitcher raised his head. ‘See, I did it. I said I would.’ A ghost of a smile lingered in his eyes.

  ‘The children,’ Whitemore said. ‘Where are they?’

  Pitcher’s voice was a sour whisper in his face. ‘The shed. Out back. I didn’t want them to see this.’

  As Pitcher’s head slumped forward, Whitemore dialled the emergency number on his mobile phone.

  Downstairs he switched on the kitchen light; there was a box of matches lying next to the stove. Unbolting the back door, he stepped outside. The shed was no more than five feet high, roughly fashioned from odd planks of wood, the roof covered with a rime of frost. The handle was cold to the touch.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, loud enough for them to hear inside. ‘I’m just going to open the door.’

  When it swung back, he ducked inside and struck a match. The three children were clinging to one another in the furthest corner, staring wide-eyed into the light.

  Darren Pitcher had lost consciousness by the time the paramedics arrived and despite their efforts and those of the doctors at A amp; E, he was pronounced dead a little after six that morning. Sutured and bandaged, Emma Laurie was kept in overnight and then released. Her children had been scooped up by the social services emergency duty team and would spend a short time in care.

  Tom Whitemore drove to the embankment and stood on the pedestrian bridge across the river, staring down at the dark, glassed-over surface of the water, the pale shapes of sleeping swans, heads tucked beneath their wings. Overhead, the sky was clear and pitted with stars.

  When finally he arrived home, it was near dawn.

  The heating in the house had just come on.

  Upstairs, in the twins’ room, it felt cold nonetheless. Each bed was carefully made up, blankets folded neatly back. Just in case. He stood there for a long time, letting the light slowly unfold round him. The start of another day.

  SNOW, SNOW, SNOW

  Snow drifted, soft, against his face.

  Earlier, the wind had whipped each succeeding fall into a virtual blizzard, slicing into him as he stood, barely sheltered, on the edge of the fen.

  Now it was this: the snow of fairy tales and dreams.

  A pair of swans floated, uncaring, along the shuffled surface of the water, at home in the gathering white.

  Malkin checked his watch and continued to stand.

  Fifteen minutes later, Fraser’s SUV appeared on the raised strip of road, headlights pale through the mist of falling snow.

  Malkin waited until, indicator blinking, the vehicle slowed into the left-hand turn that would take it along a narrow, barely made-up lane to where the new house was in the process of construction, further along the fen.

  The main structure was already in place: varying shades of yellow brick at each end and to the rear, the front partly clad in as yet untreated wood. The frames for the large windows that would dominate the upper floor had recently been set. No glass as yet. Ladders leaned against scaffolding, secured with rope. A bucket half-filled and frozen fast. Tarpaulins that flapped in each catch of wind.

  Fastidious, Fraser changed soft leather shoes for green Wellingtons and pulled on his sheepskin coat. Lifting back the mesh gates that guarded the site, he moved inside, and, after a few moments, disappeared into the building’s shell.

  Snow continued to fall.

  Malkin stood no more than forty metres away, all but invisible against the washed-out sky, the shrouded earth.

  Cautious, Fraser climbed the ladder to the upper floor and stared out. He’d expected the architect to be already at the site, not limping in late with some excuse about the weather. A bit of snow. February. What else did he expect?

  Treading with care across the boards, Fraser eased aside a length of tarpaulin and stepped inside what would be the main room, running almost the entire length of the floor. Views right out across open land, unimpeded as far as the horizon. But not today. He failed to hear Malkin’s foot on the ladder’s bottom rung.

  Angry, Fraser pushed back his cuff and double-checked his watch. Damned architect!

  Hearing Malkin’s footsteps now, he turned. ‘What sort of time d’you call this?’

  Malkin stepped through the space of the open doorway and out of the snow.

  ‘Who the hell…?’ Fraser began, words fading from his lips.

  Malkin smiled.

  ‘Remember Sharon Peters?’ he said.

  For an instant, Fraser saw a tousle-haired girl of eight, playing catch ball up against the wall as she waited for her bus; her face, at the last moment, widening in a scream.

  ‘You do remember,’ Malkin said, ‘don’t you?’

  The pistol was already in his hand.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Ashen, Fraser stumbled back, began to plead.

  For jobs like this Malkin favoured a 9mm Glock 17. Light, plastic, readily disposable. Two shots were usually enough.

  Or sometimes one.

  At the sound, a solitary crow rose, shaking snowflakes from its wings, and began to circle round.

  Blood was beginning to leak, already, from the back of Fraser’s head, staining the untreated wood a dull reddish-brown. Snow swirled into Malkin’s face as he descended the ladder, and with a quick shake of his head he blinked it away.

  The train was no more than a third full and he had a table to himself, plenty of room to spread the paper and read. Every once in a while, he looked out at the passing fields, speckled as they were with snow. Hedgerows and rooftops gleamed white in the fresh spring sun.

  He read again the account, all too familiar, of a prison suicide: a nineteen-year-old who had hanged himself in his cell. According to his family, the youth had been systematically beaten and bullied during the weeks leading up to his death, and prison staff had turned a blind eye.

  ‘My son,’ the mother was reported as saying, ‘made complaint after complaint to the governor and the prison officer in charge of his wing, and they did nothing. Nothing. And now they’re as guilty of his death as if they’d knotted the sheet themselves and kicked away the chair.’

  Poetic, Malkin thought. A good turn of phrase. He tore the page from the newspaper, folded it neatly once and once again and slipped it into his wallet. One for a rainy day.

  When the train pulled into the station, he left the remainder of the newspaper on the seat, pulled on his coat, and walked the length of the platform to the exit, taking his time.

  The first thing he saw, stepping into the broad concourse, was a police officer in helmet and body armour, submachine gun held at an angle across his chest, and he was glad that he’d disposed of the Glock before boarding the train. Not that any of this was for him.

  Two other officers, similarly armed, stood just outside the station entrance, at the head of the pavement steps. Anti-terrorism, Malkin thought, it had to be. A suspect being brought in that day for trial. Some poor bastard Muslim who’d made the mistake of visiting Afghanis
tan, or maybe just sent money to the wrong cause. Most likely now he’d be slammed up for a couple of years in Belmarsh or some other top-security hole, then released without charge.

  But that wasn’t why Malkin was here.

  He crossed close to a Transit holding as many as ten officers in reserve and descended the cobbled slip road leading to the canal. A short distance along, the high glass and polished stone of the new courthouse was guarded by yet more police.

  All it needed, Malkin thought, was a helicopter circling overhead.

  He showed his ID and explained his reasons for entry. The case he was interested in was due to conclude today.

  A little over two years before, Alan Silver had been woken in the night by the sound of intruders; he had armed himself with the licensed shotgun that he kept close by the bed, gone to the head of the stairs and emptied both barrels into the two youths he surprised below. One took superficial wounds to the arm and neck and was able to turn and run; the other was thrown backwards on to the tiles of the broad hallway, bleeding out, a hole torn in his chest.

  Silver phoned emergency services, ambulance and police, but by the time the paramedics arrived, less than ten minutes later, it was too late. Wayne Michaels, seventeen, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

  Alan Silver — a sometime song-and-dance man and minor celebrity — was both hero and villain. The more righteous of the media spoke of unnecessary force and questioned the rights of any civilians to own firearms at all, while others championed him as a hero. Right-of-centre politicians strutted in reflected glory, crowing about the right of every Englishman to protect house and home, his proverbial castle.

  When Silver, described in court as a popular entertainer, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, there was uproar. ‘Is this all a young man’s life is worth?’ demanded the Independent. ‘Jailed for doing what was right!’ denounced the Mail.

  Outside the court that day, Wayne Michaels’ father, Earl, sweaty, clinging to his dignity in an ill-fitting suit, was asked how he felt about the verdict. ‘My son is dead,’ he said. ‘Now let justice take its course.’

  More recently, Silver’s lawyers had earned the right to appeal; the sentence, they said, was punitive and over-severe. Punitive, Malkin remembered thinking: isn’t that supposed to be the point?

  Riding on the back of a popular hysteria about the rising rate of crime they had helped to create, the tabloid press rejoiced in seeing their circulations soar, inviting their readers to text or email in support of the campaign Free Silver Now!

  ‘If this government,’ proclaimed a Tory peer in the Lords, ‘and this Home Secretary, have not totally lost touch with the people they are supposed to represent, they should act immediately and ensure that the sentence in this case be made to better reflect the nation’s mood.’

  Malkin settled into the back of the public gallery in time for the verdict: after due deliberation, and having reconsidered both his previously untarnished reputation and his unstinting work for charity, the judge reduced Alan Silver’s sentence to eighteen months. Taking into account the time he had spent on remand awaiting trial, this meant Silver had little more than two months to serve.

  Channel Five were rumoured to have offered him a six-figure contract to host a weekly chat show; a long-forgotten recording of ‘Mama Liked the Roses’, a sentimental country ballad initially made popular by Elvis Presley, had been reissued and was currently number seven in the charts.

  As he was led out to the waiting Securicor van, Alan Silver, grey hair trimmed short and wearing his sixty-three years well, was, none too surprisingly, smiling.

  Malkin found Michaels’ father staring into the water of the canal, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘You still think justice should be allowed to take its course?’ Malkin said.

  ‘Do I fuck!’

  Earlier that morning, Will Grayson and his four-year-old son, Jake, had been building a snowman at the back of the house: black stones for the eyes, a carrot for a nose, one of Will’s old caps, the one he’d worn when he was on the police bowling team, snug on the snowman’s head.

  Inside, Will could see his wife, Lorraine, through the kitchen window, moving back and forth behind the glass. Pancakes, he wouldn’t have minded betting. Lorraine liked to make pancakes for breakfast those mornings he didn’t have to go in to work; Lorraine well into her eighth month and on maternity leave, the size of her such that their second kid must be almost ready to pop. Baby might come early, the midwife had said.

  As Will crouched down and added a few finishing touches to their snowman, Jake sneaked round behind him and caught him with a snowball from close range. Will barely heard the phone through the boy’s shrieks of laughter; didn’t react until he saw Lorraine waving through the window, her knuckles banging on the pane.

  Will touched her belly gently with the palm of his hand as he passed. Good luck.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, picking up the phone. ‘This is Grayson.’

  The change in his face told Lorraine all she needed to know and quickly she set to making a flask of coffee; a morning like this, more snow forecast, he would need something to keep out the cold.

  Will laced up his boots, pulled on a fleece, took a weatherproof coat from the cupboard beneath the stairs; the first pancake was ready and he ate it with a smudge of maple syrup, licking his fingers before lifting his son into the air and swinging him round, kissing him, then setting him down.

  Lorraine leaned forward and hugged him at the door. ‘Be careful when you’re driving home. In case it freezes over.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He kissed her eyes and mouth. ‘And call me if anything, you know, happens.’

  She laughed. ‘Go get the bad guys, okay?’

  When the car failed to start first time, Will cursed, fearing the worst, but then the engine caught and turned and he was on his way, snaking tyre tracks through a film of fallen snow.

  Some thirty minutes and two wrong turnings later, he pulled over into a farm gateway and unfolded the map. Out there in the middle of the fens, a day like this, everything looked the damned same.

  It was another ten minutes before he finally arrived, wheels cracking the ice, and slid to a halt behind Helen Walker’s blue VW, last in line behind the three police vehicles parked alongside the fen. There was an ambulance further back, closer to the road.

  Helen Walker: how had she got there before him?

  ‘Afternoon, Will,’ she called sarcastically, leaning over the scaffolding on the upper level of the unfinished house. ‘Good of you to join us.’

  Will shot her a finger and began making his way up the ladder.

  He and Helen had worked together the best part of three years now, Will, as detective inspector, enjoying the higher rank, but, most of the time, that wasn’t how it worked. It was more as if they were partners, sometimes one would lead, sometimes the other.

  ‘How’s Lorraine?’ Helen’s first question when he stepped off on to the boards.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘Kicking for England.’

  She laughed at the grin on his face.

  ‘What have we got?’ Will asked.

  Helen stepped aside.

  The dead man lay on his back, one arm flung out, the other close to his side, legs splayed. Eyes opened wide. A dark hole at the centre of his forehead. The blood that had pooled out from the exit wound seemed to have frozen fast.

  ‘Someone found him like this?’

  ‘Kids. Playing around.’

  Will crouched low then stood up straight. ‘We know who he is?’

  ‘Arthur Fraser.’

  ‘How do we know that?’

  ‘Wallet. Inside pocket.’

  ‘Not robbery then?’

  ‘Not robbery.’

  ‘Any idea what he was doing here?’

  ‘Checking on his new house, apparently. The architect’s name’s on the board below. I gave him a cal
l. He was with a client the other side of Cambridge.’ Helen took a quick look at her watch. ‘Should be here, another thirty minutes or so.’

  Will turned back towards the body. ‘He come from round here? Fraser?’

  ‘Not really. Address the other side of Coventry.’

  ‘What’s he doing having a house built here?’

  ‘I asked the architect that. Making a new start, apparently.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Malkin and Earl Michaels sat at one of a cluster of wooden tables out front of a canal-side pub. None of the other tables was occupied. The snow had held off but there was a wind, driving in from the north-west, though neither man seemed bothered by the cold. Both were drinking blended Scotch, doubles; Malkin nursing his second, Michaels on his third or fourth.

  ‘How much,’ Michaels asked, ‘always assuming I wanted to go ahead, how much is this going to cost?’

  When Malkin told him, he had to ask a second time.

  ‘That friggin’ much?’

  ‘That much.’

  ‘Then you can forget it.’

  ‘Okay.’ Downing the rest of his drink in one, Malkin got to his feet.

  ‘No. Hey, hey. Wait a minute. Wait up.’

  ‘Look,’ Malkin said, ‘no way I want to push you where you don’t want to go.’

  ‘Come on, it’s not that. You know it’s not that. Nobody wants that

  … Nobody wants it more than me. That bastard. I’d like to get hold of that fucking shotgun of his and let him have it myself.’

  ‘And end up inside doing fifteen to life.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Michaels shook his head. He was a heavy man and the weight sat ill upon him, his body lumpen, his face jowly and red.

  Malkin sat back down.